Accident Victims

A comatose 37-year-old woman at the center of a right-to-die case dividing Italy passed away Monday night amid an uproar over the government's last-ditch bid to keep her alive against the wishes of her family. The death of Eluana Englaro, who suffered massive brain damage in a car accident 17 years ago, occurred as the case was being discussed by the Senate in Rome.

Two passenger trains collided in central Cuba, killing at least three people and injuring 93, state media reported. Authorities were investigating why the eastbound and westbound trains made contact as they passed each other on parallel tracks about 8:30 a.m. near the city of Sibanicu in Camaguey province, according to the online edition of Adelante, the province's state-controlled newspaper. The impact knocked some of the cars from the tracks. Two of the injured were in serious condition, according to state television.

Two people died in the crash of a single-engine plane in a rural area of northeast San Diego County, the county medical examiner's office said Saturday. The crash occurred around 1:30 p.m. in the Warner Springs area off Highway 79, about 50 miles from downtown San Diego, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. The plane, a Beech Bonanza, was registered to a Las Vegas resident, but the plane's destination was unclear, the FAA said. The victims have not been identified. The San Diego County Sheriff's Department said that no structures were damaged and that there were no injuries other than to the two people aboard the plane.

Authorities were trying to determine whether a motorist who died early Sunday was engaged in a high-speed street race with another young man. Sheriff's deputies said two cars were traveling side by side on Alondra Boulevard near Leibacher Avenue about 6 a.m., when one driver ran a red light and swerved head-on into a tree and light pole. Deputies said the driver of the other vehicle was arrested on a charge of vehicular manslaughter. -- Dan Weikel

December 2, 2008 | Joanna Lin and Jean Merl, Lin and Merl are Times staff writers.

A 14-year-old boy was killed and four other teenagers were injured Monday when a van jumped a curb and slammed into a bus shelter in South Gate. The crash occurred on Firestone Boulevard at Otis Street about 3:30 p.m., just after classes let out for the day at South Gate Middle School, across the street from the crowded bus stop, South Gate police said.

Dive teams are scheduled to resume searching harbor waters this morning for the body of a fisherman who fell overboard Sunday and is presumed dead. The 50-year-old man was thrown from a small boat off Pier J about 11:30 a.m. when a companion operating the watercraft made a sudden turn, said a spokesman for the Long Beach Fire Department. Several agencies, including the Coast Guard, dispatched rescue boats to the area about 75 feet beyond the breakwater but did not find the man, who was not identified.

At 11:30 on the morning of Sept. 19, some 60 engineers and conductors gathered at a modest La Crescenta house. They had come to memorialize Robert Sanchez, the engineer killed a week earlier when the Metrolink train he was driving collided with a Union Pacific freight train.